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Ortom is a mistake, he's a disgrace to Benue State - Tsav

Written By Idoma Television on Monday, August 8, 2016 | 9:39:00 AM

An
elder statesman and a former Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Alhaji
Abubakar Tsav has again lashed out on the present administration in
Benue State led by Governor Samuel Ortom. In this recent interview with Nigerian Concord, he talks about the government's policies and more....

Excerpts:

You have always been complaining about what you called a Harvest of Looting in Benue state. Can you explain this better sir?

It Is very pathetic because Governor Ortom’s government just started and
we are facing these kinds of things under him. There are many cases of
looting, some haven’t come to light yet while some are already with the
EFCC. And the governor keeps saying that he Is a man of God. He keeps
saying anyone who chops money that money will chop him. He is not a
consistent man because he says something and does a different thing. You
see, what we are facing under Ortom is really very bad. We don’t know
what may happen at the end of his tenure because the huge money he is
borrowing now, he has not invested it on any meaningful project, and he
has borrowed a lot of money. Just recently, the former governor, Dr.
Suswam, said that it may take more than three generations of our
children to pay the loans which Ortom has borrowed.

(Cuts in) Why are the elders in Benue not advising the governor?

There are elders in the state but most of them aren’t talking. None of
them is saying anything against his policies. They just allow him to do
whatever he feels like doing and this is killing the state slowly. This
man said sometimes that the God Almighty revealed to him 20 years ago
that he would be governor. Well, if God revealed to you that you would
be a governor, did you not plan how you are going to run your
government? If God is so gracious by choosing you as governor, you
should have planned on how to run your government. I said this because
Ortom is running his government without any plans. His case can be
likened with a man who doesn’t know how to swim and you just put him at
the middle of a big river and leave him there. What do you think will
happen to him? He will just get himself drown inside the river. This is
exactly the case in Benue state.

Governor Ortom keeps saying that his predecessor didn’t leave a good legacy behind for him?

(Cuts in)… That is not true and we have advised him (Ortom) many times
to shun blame games and deliver his campaign promises to Benue people. I
am sure God put Ortom there so that the people of our state can begin
to appreciate the government of former Governor Gabriel Suswam. Before
now, they did say Suswam didn’t do this or that but now they have
brought someone who is always imposing policies that do not have human
faces on them. This man says he is a man of God and I haven’t seen a
liar like him in my life. He says one thing and does the other. The
other day he came to Abuja to see the President, as soon as he came out
of the Presidential lodge, the reporters there interviewed him about the
arrest of the Speaker of the State House of Assembly and some other
principal officers, and he appeared very straight. He said the Speaker
and his colleagues were on their own, adding that they had chopped money
and money should chop them. That was the language he used and people
thought he would allow the rule of law to prevail but when he got home,
he changed his tune and started supporting the thieves. He said these
people had the right to collect the money and buy the cars by
themselves. And now, he is supporting the Speaker, saying that he hasn’t
seen anything wrong in the criminal act which the EFCC recently
arrested him for. Few weeks ago, a member of the House raised a motion,
asking the Speaker to step down and the man was suspended for five
months. Doing this shows that these people aren’t ready to fight
corruption in Benue state. If they were serious to fight corruption,
they should have discussed the car scam instead of suspending someone
who was trying to shield light. Even before the man raised the motion,
the speaker had brought in some thugs with a clear order that they
should attack whoever that raised anything against him (Speaker). So as
far as I am concerned, Ortom is a big liability to Benue state because
is running a government of criminals.

You said the governor hasn’t performed well but he recently brought in some Chinese to invest in the state?

(Laughs)….. I don’t think he means well for the people of Benue in that
regard because I personally listened to him on the Television when he
brought in the Chinese. To me, it appears the man doesn’t have any
programme because he said the Chinese should carry out any projects that
they want without any specification. I think a reasonable man who is
bringing in investors must have an agenda for them. You tell them to do
this, do that, but Ortom didn’t say that. He only asked them to carry
out any project that they like. We are in a mess and I will not blame
anybody. I will only blame Akume because he spent eight years as
governor, doing nothing. He failed woefully but Suswam was very
kind-hearted. He didn’t investigate him (Akume). I reported so many
cases against Akume to the EFCC but it was Suswam who came and dropped
all the cases. I made eight different statements to the EFCC against
Akume about all the allegations of looting but Suswam came and stopped
the cases. And again, the man has been in the Senate and this is his
Third Term and he has done nothing. In the Senate, you will see him
dosing. He is not active in the Senate but you see him getting involved
in issues that don’t concern him at home. Akume is very lazy, he has no
idea and how do you expect him to perform. He imposed Ortom on us
because he contested for the ticket under PDP and lost to Terhemen
Tarzoor and after that he ran to APC and Akume imposed him on the party,
and the people accepted him as a result of the Change Mantra. Ortom
came and said he is a man of God but as far as I am concerned, he is not
a man of God but a devil incarnate.

But he recently dedicated the state to God. How come you are now saying that he is not a man of God?

Yes, it happened during the Easter celebration. He prostrated and said
he was dedicating Benue state to God because of the sins he claimed to
have met when he came in as governor. But this same man is going about
doing things that are against what he preached on the day he said he was
dedicating Benue to God.

How do you mean sir?

Yes for instance, two weeks ago, some women organized a thanksgiving
session in honour of Suswam and his wife, and Ortom sent in some thugs
to go and disrupt the event. This has been confirmed because the APC
chairman of Ushongo local government area made a clear statement that
they truly arranged the boys to go and protest because the other time
Suswam came to their place, he made statements that they didn’t like.
What we said about the invasion is what the APC chieftain in the local
government has just confirmed. He said they sent the thugs to go and
disrupt a thanksgiving service which was meant to praise the same God
whom Ortom said he had dedicated Benue to. If Ortom truly dedicated
Benue to God, would he have paid thugs to go and disrupt a thanksgiving
session which was organized to praise and adore that same Almighty God?
The unfortunate thing for Ortom is that all the people around him are
thugs. You see, Benue has produced a lot of graduates. We have so many
academicians, so many professionals but he has decided to bring in thugs
and he listens to them.

Can we have your take on the Governor’s Amnesty programme?

That is 100 Per Cent nonsense. The governor organized the Amnesty
Programme and failed to involve the police. The Amnesty program which he
organized was only meant to give soft landing to one man known as
‘Gana’. This is a notorious criminal who had killed so many policemen,
so many soldiers and so many innocent people. This is the man Ortom
granted amnesty, and he keeps saying that they have recovered some arms.
Look here, in a proper amnesty programme where arms are surrendered to
the amnesty group, I expect them to take such arms to the Police so that
they would be registered as exhibits. The police will also check if the
arms were among the ones used to attack police stations. They will also
check if the arms are among the ones that were hijacked from policemen.
We expected Ortom to give these arms to the police for a proper
investigation but he didn’t. Instead, he kept them in the Government
House and he has a lot of thugs around him who can use them to terrorize
people and bring them back. They might not even bring them back at all.
So ortom’s Amnesty is just to prepare people to cause havoc in the
state.

Recently, a security adviser to the governor was killed and arrests were made. Can we have your take on this?

Yes. The man who was killed was a Police Sergeant. How can a sensible
governor appoint a Police Sergeant as his security adviser? That is bad.
Worse still, some aides of the governor went and killed him. If the
governor had wanted to get the right man to be his security adviser, he
should have consulted the Commissioner of Police and not hand picking an
ordinary police sergeant. We have found ourselves in a great difficulty
and my anger is that no elder is talking. Nobody says anything, and our
people behave as people whose mothers’ breasts don’t dry. And if your
mother’s breast doesn’t dry, you can go anywhere and still come back to
suck the breast. What I mean is that these people were with Suswam in
the first place. He did everything to encourage them but as soon as he
left power, they entered into another relationship with Ortom and they
are still with him. And when he goes, they will jump into the ship of
another governor that comes in. They do not think about future. They are
not people that can be taken serious and that is why our situation is
very bad in Benue state today.

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